The Story Sisters (21 page)

“Tell me a story,” she whispered in bed. “Tell me about the dog.”

He spoke softly, arms around her. A posse had been formed.
They had lanterns, torches, and knives. It didn’t take long for them to find the gang who had killed Mother, his grand watchdog, the mother of all vicious, loyal beasts. The gang responsible was made up of a hodgepodge of thugs who terrorized women and children living underground, demanding protection money from the sick and the weak.

They went after a little girl named Emma, having been contacted by a couple aboveground who would pay two thousand dollars in exchange for a child. Emma was perfect. Her mother brought her to a public school kindergarten every day, waiting on a bench outside until the school day was done. That’s where the unscrupulous couple had first spied her, deciding they wanted her for their own.

On the day of the planned abduction, Lorry and Mother had been passing by the tent where the child and her mother lived. Mother knew evil so well he could smell it. He stopped and bared his teeth. The fur along his back rose up in a ridge. The gang scattered now that Lorry and his dog were on the scene. Still, their intentions were clear; someone had cut through the tent where Emma and her mother lived. Someone was just about to grab her.

As a reward, Lorry and his dog were offered bowls of stew. It was all the woman had to show her gratitude, and on that night it seemed a great gift. Lorry and Mother were both starving.

The death of his dog was payback for thwarting the plan to take the little girl. Well, payback it would be. There were pools of blood when Lorry and his friends were done with the gang, and then a scattering. Two bodies on the track, the worst of the worst. Some things were meant to never be mentioned again, not then and not ever. When those who’d been there on that evening passed each other in the future, they nodded and rarely said more than a few words in greeting, yet they were brothers in some unspoken way. Lorry wrapped up the dog’s body in the only
blanket he owned, then carried him outside. He buried the dog in Central Park, not far from the zoo. He wanted his dog to be where snow would rim the ground, where the grass grew. There was a freedom in that, even for the fallen.

Elv was naked, she seemed like snow herself, her skin was so pale. She was crying over Mother as Lorry kissed her. She felt unwound in his arms. They were completely entwined when they heard the door open. Claire was there, whimpering, apologizing. Elv leaped out of bed and went to the door.

“God, Claire! What the hell are you doing?” She touched her sister’s forehead. “You’re burning up.”

Claire peered around her sister. “Was that Justin Levy’s ghost?”

Elv turned to look. Lorry had gone through the window, into the rain.

“Justin doesn’t have a ghost,” she assured Claire.

She brought Claire into her room, closed the door, then took her sister into bed.

“You don’t know that,” Claire insisted. She felt panic-stricken and faint. “He used to come into our room. I think he’s still doing that.”

“It was Lorry, silly. I told you about him.”

“The one you’re in love with.”

“The one who turns me inside out.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?” Claire said in a hushed voice.

“Yes.” Elv looked out at the rain. “It does.”

She shoved the drug paraphernalia he’d left behind into the night table drawer. Lorry hadn’t had time to collect it all. She could still feel him all over her. She pulled on a nightgown and got into bed with Claire. She had Lorry’s works and enough for her to get high later by herself. She loved the dreamy way she felt. There was the sound of the rain, comforting against the window-pane.
He’d be drenched as he ran to his car. He’d be thinking of her all night long.

“He comes from the world underground.” Elv gave her sister a sip of water from the tumbler on her night table, along with two aspirin.

“No, he doesn’t.” Claire almost laughed, but she felt too weak.

“You can find the gate if you walk along Thirty-third Street right behind Penn Station. You have to go down eight stories, under the trains, under the subway. There are ten thousand steps with wild creatures all around. There are black roses growing beside the tracks.”

“He comes from Arnelle?” Claire was confused.

“Go to sleep,” Elv told her. “You’ll be better in the morning. You won’t even remember this.”

“Yes, I will.” Claire was so glad that her sister was back. “I always will.”

M
RS
. W
EINSTEIN WAS
the one who phoned to report seeing a man slinking through their window. She had nothing to do but gossip and butt her nose in where it wasn’t wanted. Elv came out of her room to find her mother calling the police. She grabbed the receiver away.

“It wasn’t a criminal. Don’t report him,” she pleaded.

“Elv,” Annie said. “How could you?”

“How could I what? Find true love? Get what you never had?”

Claire was still in bed; she stayed under the covers, listening to them fight. She’d found a photograph of Lorry under the pillow. She gazed at him, then hurriedly returned the picture when Elv slammed back into the room. She was being sent away to their grandmother’s, and that suited her perfectly.

“Help me pack, Gigi,” she said to Claire.

Claire got out of bed and went to the bureau. Elv had burned most of her clothes. They tossed everything she had into a single suitcase. Right before she left she retrieved the photo from under her pillow. She kissed Claire on either check and told her not to forget her, as if that would ever happen.

A
FTER HER GRANDDAUGHTER
moved into her New York apartment, Natalia had the same feeling of dread she’d had in Paris when Madame Cohen warned her to keep an eye on Elv. Some girls were in danger of vanishing just as children in fairy tales disappeared, out the door, under the hedge, never to be found again. But in fact, Elv was well behaved. She helped with the dishes. She played cards with her ama. She slept on the clean, white sheets and took baths in verbena bath oil in the big marble tub in her grandmother’s bathroom. She tried on all of her ama’s old clothes—black satin suits, white lace blouses, high heels, blue cashmere sweaters with crystal buttons, Chanel jackets that fitted her perfectly—then paraded around for her grandmother’s approval.

But she often disappeared for hours, even days, and when she returned she was too exhausted to talk; she simply crawled between the white sheets and fell so deeply asleep that Natalia couldn’t wake her for dinner. It snowed nearly every day, and Elv usually woke in the late afternoon to go meet Lorry. They had their rendezvous spot in Manhattan, as they’d had their meeting place in New Hampshire. It was just beyond the meadow where the dog, Mother, had been buried. Lorry had taken Elv there, and they’d left a handful of roses stolen from the market on the corner. The weather had turned and Lorry was still looking for an apartment, so they met in an underpass near the zoo. It was easy
to forget you were in Manhattan in their corner of the park. Everything was muffled and quiet. It made Elv think of New Hampshire. She still missed the horses. She wondered who was taking care of them and if they would remember her if she ever went back.

Elv hadn’t thought she needed to get high, but sometimes there was something needy snaking through her, rising to the surface. It was hot, dangerous. It felt like the way she needed him. At last she heard footsteps on the path. Lorry appeared, wearing his black coat and a black woolen hat. He looked beautiful in the snow. Snow didn’t bother him. Nothing did. He reminded her of a man in a fairy tale who could always find his way, even without a map.

Everything was white. There were snowflakes on Elv’s eyelashes. Inside the tunnel there was the smell of piss and hay, not that it mattered. Elv heard a wolf in the zoo. She thought of all the animals out in the snow in New York City; she thought of the time Claire stole a horse just to please her. She loved her sister and Claire loved her back and they didn’t even have to speak to understand each other. She wondered if the carousel horses were still in the park or if they’d run away too. Elv shrugged off the cashmere coat she’d borrowed from her grandmother’s closet. She told Lorry she couldn’t sneak him into her grandmother’s apartment the way he’d come to the house in North Point Harbor. Her grandmother would have a heart attack or something, and the apartment wasn’t that big. For the past few days, Lorry had been living hand to mouth, staying with friends, waiting for a big break-in to go down someplace in Great Neck. Elv hated lying to him, but she claimed the apartment was haunted by her grandfather’s ghost. Lorry had a fear of ghosts. He said that was the only thing he’d worried about when he’d lived underground.
There were so many ghosts down below you could hear them moaning in the night.

Elv knelt with her back against the tunnel and offered him her arm. She laughed when he said he hoped it wasn’t becoming her fatal flaw. “That’s you, baby,” she said, leaning to kiss his cheek. She didn’t like to put the needle in—the metal scared her. It made her think of handcuffs, pricked fingers, blood seeping down, a sleep that lasted a hundred years. She gazed at the graffiti on the wall. It all looked like Arnish to her, only she couldn’t understand that language anymore. Lorry took something out of his pocket, a small velvet box. He tossed it to her. Inside was an emerald ring with a red-gold band. It was exquisite.

“Just so you know I’m not playing,” he said.

She leaned to kiss him. She belonged where she was, with him. Everything was beautiful, especially the snow. After Lorry got high, he put his head in her lap and closed his eyes. He sang “Blackbird,” such a beautiful, sad song. He told her he sang that song when he buried his dog in the park, when he stood there alone in the greening light, having lost his best friend, his only protector. Elv studied his face. He was perfect. He was always there for her. She gazed at the falling snow. She could still hear the wolves in the zoo. They listened together.

She took him to her grandmother’s the next time her ama went out for the evening.

N
ATALIA WENT TO
dinner on Long Island with Elise and Mary Fox. She was caught by a snowstorm and had to spend the weekend. “Don’t worry,” Elv said. “I have tons of canned soup and frozen pizza. I don’t even have to go out.” When Elise and Mary brought Natalia home, they were shocked by what they found. Mary went to the spare bedroom. There was Elv, passed out on
the bed, naked. Mary noticed the glint of needles in an ashtray before she went back to the hall. The door to the bathroom was open. Lorry had a towel wrapped around him. His dark hair was slicked back.

They didn’t know his name or anything about him, only that he threw on his clothes and skulked past them, put out, as if they were the intruders. “Tell her I’ll be back,” he said. He was a whirl wind, handsome, sure of himself. Natalia could see how he could enthrall a young girl, to whom he would seem forbidden, beautiful. She might not notice that wherever he went, destruction followed.

Annie drove in the next morning and waited for Elv to explain herself. Elv had been crying and she was exhausted. Natalia seemed so disappointed; she looked her age, a woman who didn’t know how to handle her favorite granddaughter. Elv was fidgety and apprehensive. She wore the emerald on her left hand.

“Where did you get that?” Annie demanded. “Have you seen it before?” she asked Natalia.

“It’s mine,” Elv declared. She hid her hand. “I didn’t steal it from Ama if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Did you get it from that man?”

“That man
cares about me. Unlike you.”

“She can stay here,” Natalia said. “We’ll talk things over. We’ll figure out how to make it work.”

“It’s unworkable,” Annie said. “I’m not having her do this to you.”

“Do what to her? I would never hurt you,” Elv told her ama.

They left and went down to the car, parked around the block. Elv got in and slumped down. She was tapping her foot. She looked ready to explode.

“Elv. You know I care.”

Elv stared out the window. She wasn’t listening to her
mother. She was biting her nails. “You’re going to look back on this and see what a terrible mother you were.”

“That man is not to come to our house.”

“Do you think you can make me listen to you?”

Annie reached across Elv and opened the car door. “Then don’t come home. Go to a residential school.”

Elv glared at her mother, then pulled the door shut. It was freezing out there. It was so cold your fingertips could turn blue in seconds flat. She’d known all that talk about caring was a big fat lie. “Fine,” she said bitterly.

“Fine,” Annie agreed. It should have felt like a victory, but it felt like a loss. It took them a long time to get home because of the road conditions. Even so, they didn’t speak a word.

T
HE WINTER LASTED
forever, with record snowfalls reported. It was March and still snowing. And then, one morning, Claire awoke to find it was spring. It was a Sunday and the bluebells on the lawn had suddenly appeared. When she went downstairs, her mother was already dressed. Annie was going into the city to have lunch with Natalia. Their relationship had been strained since the incident with Lorry. They usually agreed on the important things, but not anymore. Natalia felt Elv should move in with her again, but Annie seemed to have given up hope.

“There has to be a way to bring her back to us,” Natalia continued to say.

“If I knew what that was, I would do it,” Annie told her.

“Maybe we should get to know that fellow of hers,” Natalia said.

“Absolutely not,” Annie had told her mother. “Not him.”

“Give Ama a big hug from me,” Claire said when her mother was about to set off for the city.

“Can you keep an eye on your sister?”

“Absolutely,” Claire said, even though she knew Elv had been in a wretched mood since her return.

When her mother left, Claire gazed out the window. A robin was hopping about on the lawn. It made her think of the baby bird they’d found and the necklace of bones Elv had made. She wondered if she was the only one in the world who thought the things Elv did were beautiful: the robin necklace and the tattoo of roses, the language made up of words that sounded like birdsong.